More trouble on Dundas Street West

Councillor Ana Bailão (Davenport) is not happy. She came down to the press gallery at City Hall before lunch, with steam pouring out of her ears. Her problem is the seemingly endless construction project on Dundas Street West, a stretch of town where I happen to live. In the past few years work crews have (a) ripped up the street to replace the streetcar tracks (b) ripped them up again to replace the water mains (c) taken away on-street parking (d) put the on-street parking back on, and now, this summer, have the street all closed off again so they can pour new sidewalks.

But Monday during a site visit Ms. Bailão, elected last fall, learned that, once the sidewalks are poured and the work is done on Sept. 4, Enbridge is coming in to cut the sidewalks back up again later that month, and patch them with asphalt.

“It’s just the idea, that these business owners have gone through so much,” she says. “These are small businesses that are struggling. Now we were coming to the end of it. We wre going to have it done. It’s a symptom of what is wrong in this city. Can you imagine being a business owner: your revenue has gone down 50% [during new sidewalk construction], you come out and you see asphalt patches?”

Apparently, thanks to the councillor’s speedy intervention, Enbridge will replace gas lines before the new sidewalks get poured on the south side of Dundas, between Landsdowne Avenue and Dundas Street West. But on the north side of the same stretch, Enbridge will have to make 13 cuts in the brand-new sidewalks to hook gas mains to businesses. Those sidewalks have already been poured.

Ms. Bailão dropped off a letter she mailed to Peter Crocket, executive director of technical services at the city, in which she pleads, “I hope that we can find a solution to this situation and that it’s not repeated in other areas of Toronto.” Good luck with that, councillor, and thanks for speaking up.